The Pros and Cons

Things change very quickly in the computer's world. Just one year past, the Internet Explorer from Microsoft seemed to hold an unassailable grip on the Internet browser's market.

Then to its surprise, through the combination of several security vulnerabilities, a set of aging features and the evolution of much more modern browsers, the Internet Explorer began to look more vulnerable.

So vulnerable in the sense that over hundred million users had already switched to several other browsers. And the browser that most had switched to is the Mozilla Firefox.

Firefox is a lean tabbed, fast browser produced in the market by Mozilla Corporation. It is the nimble young brother of a full-featured original Mozilla Suite which itself being the spin-off from the Netscape browser.

The latest version of Firefox is the 2.0, a first major update since the version 1.0, the official first release.

Firefox is of course an impressive product but certainly it isn't perfect. The decision to shift to Firefox from Internet Explorer is the decision that involves trading a set of several attributes for another. Each individual has to weigh the advantages and the disadvantages and make the decision based on the needs.

Three Fine Reasons to Abandon The Internet Explorer

1. It's the ongoing security risk.

First of all, as the most popular browser of the world, it is the target for many hackers. That is because any single vulnerability that they uncover can be used against over ninety percent of all the computers. There have been more attacks on Internet Explorer than any other application or component of Windows.

2. Secondly it has the risk of security because it employs the active component of scripting called ActiveX, a property of Microsoft. The Security experts are of the most concern about the ActiveX right from the point of its introduction and these concerns have been proved justified as the ActiveX has been at the target for various security vulnerabilities.

The Internet Explorer has very high security risk because it is much close to the Windows Operating System's core. This is implies that the hacker who can break into the Internet Explorer can not only hack the browser but can also hack the operating system as well.

3. Internet Explorer is less configurable than Firefox

Although Internet Explorer 7 now provides an useful collection of the add-ons that let you to customize the browsing experience, those number of add-ons can't just compare to 1000+ free extensions that are available for the Firefox.

For instance, I have been currently using eleven extensions of Firefox, but only a single extension is available for Internet Explorer 7.

Firefox looks much flexible than the when compared to Internet Explorer, but it has its own share of disadvantages as well. Firefox takes more memory and loads slower than the Internet Explorer. Some websites don't work properly with the Firefox.